e of his fish and rice in gloomy silence. Ume's gentle words
failed to bring a reply. When the breakfast dishes were removed the
old man continued listlessly in his place, staring out with unseeing
eyes into his garden.

A loud knock came to the wooden entrance gate near the kitchen. Kano
heard a man's deep tones, Mata's thin voice answering an enquiry, and
then the soft murmur of Ume's words. An instant later, heavy
footsteps, belonging evidently to a wearer of foreign shoes, came
around by the side of the house toward the garden. Kano looked up,
frowning with annoyance. A fine-looking man of middle age appeared.
Kano's irritation vanished.

"Ando Uchida!" he cried aloud, springing to his feet, and hurrying to
the edge of the veranda. "Ando Uchida, is it indeed you? How stout
and strong and prosperous you seem! Welcome!"

"A little too stout for warm weather," laughed Ando, as laboriously he
removed his foreign shoes and accepted his host's assistance up the one
stone step to the veranda.

"Welcome, Ando Uchida," said Kano again, when they had taken seats.
"It is quite five years since my eyes last hung upon your honorable
face."

"Is it indeed so long?" said the other. "Time has the wings of a
dragon-fly!"

Ando had brought with him a roll, apparently of papers, tied up in
yellow cloth. This parcel he put carefully behind him on the matted
floor. He then drew from his kimono sleeve a pink-bordered foreign
pocket-handkerchief, and began to mop his damp forehead. Kano's
politeness could not hide, entirely, a shudder of antipathy. He
hurried into new speech. "And where, if it is not rude to ask, has my
friend Ando sojourned during the long absence?"

"Chiefly among the mountains of Kiu Shiu," answered the other.

"Kiu Shiu," murmured the artist. "I wandered there in youth and have
thought always to return. The rocks and cliffs are of great beauty. I
remember well one white, thin waterfall that flung itself out like a
laugh, but never reached a thing so dull as earth. Midway it was
splintered upon a sunbeam, and changed into rainbows, pearls, and
swallows!"

"I know it excellently well," said Uchida. "Indeed I have been zealous
to preserve it, chiefly for your sake."

"Preserve it? What can you mean?"

"I have become a government inspector of mines," explained Uchida, in
some embarrassment. "I thought you knew. There is a rich coal deposit
near that waterfall."

"Ando! Ando!" groan